CA legislature passes gay-history mandate as the ship sinks

posted at 9:25 am on July 6, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Rarely do we get a juxtaposition of stories like we see today about California’s political class. The legislature returned from the Independence Day holiday to address the pressing, acute issue that has the state in crisis mode — the lack of mention in schools of accomplishments by gays and lesbians:

A bill to require California public schools to teach the historical accomplishments of gay men and lesbians passed the state Legislature on Tuesday in what supporters call a first for the nation.

Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, has not said publicly whether he supports the bill, which he has 12 days to sign or veto once it reaches his desk later this month. If he takes no action, the measure would become law automatically. …

California already requires public schools to teach the contributions made to society by women and by racial and ethnic groups that were historically discriminated against, such as blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

Supporters of the latest bill said it would simply include gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals in that existing requirement, making it part of the curriculum in history and other social studies classes.

“It’s unfair to leave out or exclude an entire portion of our population from history,” said Carolyn Laub, executive director of San Francisco-based Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

Remember the days when we just taught history and civics and worried more about whether our children acquired the necessary skills in civics to be informed citizens able to responsibly act in self-governance, before we turned history and civics classes into check boxes for various victim castes? Good times, good times.

Meanwhile, the minor, multibillion-dollar problem in budgeting still threatens to push California into default. The Los Angeles Times reports that one reason California can’t pay its bills is because more than 1400 of its employees make over $200,000 per year, putting them into the same range as a Vice President of the United States. One prison doctor pulls down more than three quarters of a million dollars each year (via Newsalert):

More than 1,400 state employees were paid in excess of $200,000 last year, according to compensation data made public for the first time Tuesday on Controller John Chiang‘s website.

Of those, 790 were prison doctors, dentists or nurses. More than 300 others were psychiatrists and other medical professionals working for the Department of Mental Health.

One prison doctor collected $777,423 in 2010 and a dentist took home $599,403, according to the website. The president of the state’s stem cell research agency received $482,234.

So who are these public employees? You’ll never know … at least if Chiang has anything to say about it:

Chiang, a Democrat who has received millions in campaign contributions from state employee unions, did not include workers’ names even though that information is public and has been provided upon request for years.

As if this isn’t bad enough, the Times’ Jack Dolan reports that state records show that one prison psychiatrist received over $590,000 — for unused sick time dating back less than three years. Another dentist got over half a million dollars in sick-time payouts. Over three hundred state employees got more than $100,000 in such lump-sum payouts in 2010.

Perhaps the state legislature passes these nonsense education mandates in order to keep the next generation of citizens from learning about such historical events in America as the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty, and civics lessons like impeachment. The Golden State is sinking into a sea of red ink because of holes drilled in their financial ship by public-employee unions, and the political class at the helm can only act to instruct passengers to salute politically-correct victim classes on the way to the bottom.